The Mom Stop: Starting summer with a list

It was something my two oldest kids had been planning and looking forward to for weeks: The start of summer.

My kids have written summertime to-do lists, bucket lists of activities they want to experience before school starts back, and they asked me excitedly about going to the pool.

My 8-year-old’s “bucket” list included going to the pool, going to the American Girl store in Atlanta, going to the zoo and going on a “day cruise.” (Sorry, my sweet girl, closest thing we are getting to a “day cruise” is going on your grandparent’s pontoon boat.) My 5-year-old son’s summer to-do list, was, in comparison, very simple -- he wants to play with his Nerf guns at the neighborhood park. Done.

In a household where both parents work, it can be difficult to fill in the summertime child care gap between when school ends and when school begins. Often it means a patchwork of school-based “enrichment camps,” soccer-camps, sleep away camp and babysitters. It’s like a carefully planned out roulette of who goes where and when, with two parents and a sitter serving as transportation to and from.

When I was a kid, times were simpler. My mom, a single mom, was at work, which meant we almost always had a babysitter. But summertime meant sleeping in, watching hours of “Little House on the Prairie” reruns or walking to our neighborhood pool, where we spent 90 percent of our day. If we were lucky, we might order pizza for lunch. Afterward, we might have been ordered to play in the backyard, drinking from the garden hose if we got thirsty. But there was an unencumbered freedom that I want my kids to experience, too: The freedom of summer.

And so, last week, the first week of summer, I took the week off from work. We played with Legos, watched movies, listened to an audio version of the first Harry Potter book. The first day home, we didn’t even get out of our pajamas.

But we didn’t stay home every day. We went to the Birmingham Zoo, and the American Girl store in Atlanta. We did go to the pool and my 5-year-old son proudly accomplished something he had been previously terrified to do: Go down the tube-slide. But he timidly tried it and after the initial splash, he exited the slide with a huge grin across his dimpled face. He rode that slide over and over until it was time to leave the pool.

We rode bikes around our neighborhood. We slept in most mornings, something that’s rare during the school year when they have to be on the school bus at 7 a.m. When the kids wanted to stay in, we did. When they felt like doing something on their own, they did.

Sure, there were fights, as my kids argued over who broke the other’s Star Wars Lego spaceship, or over who got choose what to watch on the playroom television. But for the most part, there was peace, an excitement over their newfound freedom, elation at the thought of being out school for the summer.

At least, so I thought. On the last day of my week off, my daughter was playing with her dollhouse in her room when she asked when school started back. Not until August, I told her. She sighed.

“I wish it was sooner,” she replied. “I miss it.” After one week of summer, my oldest child, who loves learning so much, is ready for school to start back again.

Teachers, thank you for all you do. Thank you for loving our children and guiding them every day, teaching them about the world we live in. We’ll see you when school starts back -- happy summer.

-- Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at lydia.seabolavant@tuscaloosanews.com.